Last week, it was revealed that Google and other leading advertising companies had been bypassing the privacy settings of millions of unknowing Safari users. The Mountain View-based company maintained its innocence and claimed it “used known Safari functionality to provide features that signed-in Google users had enabled.” Microsoft is now claiming that the search giant has used a similar technique to bypass privacy settings in Internet Explorer. By default, IE blocks third-party cookies unless the site provides a “P3P Compact Policy Statement” indicating how the cookies will be used and agreeing to not track the user. Microsoft claims that Google is improperly representing certain cookies, which allows them to pass through IE’s security without disclosing the company’s intent. Google has not responded to Microsoft’s claims.

So if this is such a big deal to Apple and MS then why not warn their customers instead of turn this into a PR campaign against Google? they have both know about this for a long time so they chose to sit on it until the WSJ called out Google and Apple?